


The Shepherd

by icarus_chained



Category: Iron Man (Movies)
Genre: Flying, Friendship, Gen, Pilots, Rescue, Technology
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-26
Updated: 2012-09-26
Packaged: 2017-11-15 01:42:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,275
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/521770
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icarus_chained/pseuds/icarus_chained
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Somewhere over the Pacific, limping home from a classified mission, Rhodey's not going to make it. Then again ... he might not have to.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Shepherd

**Author's Note:**

> Still on the Rhodey kick. Title refers to the novella by Frederick Forsyth. It was a favourite of my dad's, which meant it got read a lot to us. Heh.

The armour was amazingly silent, with the comms shot and the HUD flickering. Almost serene, with nothing but wind sheer through the external mics, and nothing internally but his own increasingly laboured breathing. Nothing but metal wrapped heavy around you, ready to fall from the sky.

A morbid thought, maybe, but Rhodey was going to allow it. This once, he was going to allow it. Mostly because, all things considered, it was entirely situation-appropriate.

The sea rolled beneath him, spread out in every direction, as far as the eye could see. A vast, glittering carpet of blue-silver, slipping gently away out of the corners of his eyes, over the intermittent flashes of the HUD display. Blue above, blue below, and nothing but silence in his ears.

With the comms shot to shit, the armour down to two and a half repulsors in four, and land at least half an hour away at the fastest speeds the War Machine was still capable of ... that wasn't actually the most relaxing sight in the world. 

For one thing, if he was still over water when the second boot repulsor stopped sparking fitfully and finally died, they were going to have a hell of a time finding his body. That was, he reflected absently, a large part of the problem with classified solo missions. By the time anyone thought to look for him, the armour was going to be cold and silent at whatever depth of water he was flying over, and the problem with man-sized armours was that they didn't make that much of a sonar impression in deep water.

Of course, it was possible Tony could still track him. If he'd, you know, ignored everything Rhodey had ever told him about 'classified' and 'top secret' and 'none of your damned business, Tony', and stuck a tracker somewhere on this thing. Which, given Tony, was entirely possible. Rhodey had the armour because Tony _let_ him have the armour. If there wasn't a safety _somewhere_ , then Tony was slipping badly.

Which was, Rhodey supposed, a bizarrely comforting thought. Not lost, then. However long it would take for mission command to realise what had happened, to send someone out to look. Whatever happened after he fell ... he wouldn't be lost forever. 

Of course, someone was going to have a hell of a time explaining to the brass just _how_ the billionaire civilian had found him when he was supposed to be returning from a highly classified mission at the time. But since Rhodey'd be dead at that point, and anyway it was probably going to be Tony, and Tony didn't tend to give two shits about that sort of thing ... well, it wasn't going to be his problem, so he wasn't going to worry about it. He had a few more pressing problems to be focusing on.

Such as, he realised suddenly, the fact that the HUD, unreliable as it currently was, had started to pick something up. Something moving towards him from high altitude. _Directly_ towards him. Not a circling search pattern, or something passing through, but something actually aiming for him.

Which was, considering that he was below radar and moving way too slowly for most things to pick up, more than a little alarming.

He ran a quick systems check. Knowing it was useless even as he did it, knowing he had two functional repulsors, both of which he needed to stay airborne, no maneuverability, maybe half a belt of ammo left, and nothing really functional to shoot it out of. Given the clusterfuck that had been waiting for him when he'd reached objective, he'd been damned lucky to still be flying afterwards. If he'd been flying anything less than Starktech, and more to the point Tony's personal work, he probably wouldn't even have been doing that. Which ...

He smirked, faintly, even as he watched the newcomer get within missile range, getting ready to fight, regardless of probable outcome. With something, anything, hell if he knew. But he was shot to shit, he flying something Tony had quite probably knocked together in his garage, and it was _still flying_ (if barely) after a firestorm that would have made a decent effort to take down the Hulk.

In short, he was basically flying the Tony version of an A-10 Warthog. And for some reason, just then, that struck him as one of the funniest thoughts he'd ever had. 

Comm silence. Comm silence in a tiny metal can that was about to fall into the ocean. It did funny things to a man, okay?

Though not as much as the realisation, as the high altitude shape dropped within visual range of the War Machine's HUD, that his oncoming who-the-hell-ever was sporting very, very familiar colours. 

A familar shape, sleek as a seal and stupidly tiny-looking at these kind of ranges, flashing that so-familar red and gold.

... Rhodey laughed. He couldn't help it, he honestly couldn't, even as the malfunctioning left repulsor finally gave up the ghost in the same moment, and suddenly he was basically standing precariously on his hands in mid-air. He laughed, because fuck. Classified? What's that?

Tony fucking Stark, ladies and gentlemen. Tony Stark, and shit, Rhodey was going to have to make shit up for the brass after all, wasn't he?

The Iron Man darted in, looped him at close range, Tony's flying unusually restrained and intent. The HUD crackled, the sudden bounce in noise a scream after the silence of the past hour, the external mics picking up the whine of Tony's repulsors. Rhodey just did his best to stay airborne, and let his head follow the looping figure, ignoring the stupid grin that was probably stuck to his face.

Tony came to a stop facing him, pulling the Iron Man into a stationary hover in front of him, and casually flipped up his facemask like that was something you _did_ , hovering mid-air somewhere over the Pacific.

"... So," the bastard started, with a smarmy grin to hide the creases of worry around his eyes. "I was heading home, your honour, and I saw my friend limping home drunk or something, and I thought, now what kind of friend would I be ..."

"Fuck you, Tony," Rhodey managed, straightening his face. Not that it would have made a difference - his helmet was mostly fused shut, as far as he could tell. He was relying on the short-range mics now that Tony was, you know, about six feet away from him. "I've never driven drunk in my life. And seriously, does the word 'classified' actually mean _nothing_ to you?"

Tony grinned, bright and queasy, and gunned his repulsors slightly to drift closer into Rhodey's orbit. Careful and so precise, despite the flippancy of his tone. "What did I just say? I was just flying home, happened to see you limping by ..."

"... In _what universe_ ," Rhodey started, tried, and then the Iron Man was locked on. Then Tony had lined himself up, caught Rhodey's armour around the waist, his own stabilisers cutting out to avoid frying the few functional bits left of Rhodey's armour, and they were locked together. The Iron Man taking over lift, acting in lieu of the War Machine's shot repulsors, and leaving the steering and the stabilising to Rhodey.

Lending him a wing. Lending him a goddamn wing, and suddenly, for no good reason at all, Rhodey's voice cut out.

"Hmm," Tony muttered, the Iron Man shifting against him, the creaks as Tony tried to figure this out loud in Rhodey's mics. "Shit, no. No way I'm carrying this much weight on the front. Not all the way home. Okay, yes ... Hey, honey bear? What are your feelings regarding piggy-backing?"

Rhodey swallowed. Didn't quite manage to answer in time, and suddenly the HUD was full of Tony's face, half a foot away, bare in the armour's sights. Tony frowned, pale worry lines standing out around his eyes, anxiety lurking under the careful humour in his expression. The Iron Man flexed arms around him, metal on metal that Rhodey could almost directly feel through the more damaged parts, and Tony visibly scrambled for some means of physically checking on him when both his hands were occupied keeping them in the air.

"Rhodey? Hey. You okay in there?" Soft, and genuinely worried, and shit. Shit. It was that, maybe, more than anything, that snapped Rhodey out of it.

"... HUD's cutting in and out," he offered, pulling himself together, a partial explanation. Well, no. Barefaced lie, but it wasn't like anybody needed to know. "Piggy-backing how?" Fixing the lightness back in his tone. "Because I'm telling you now, I am _not_ riding you home."

Tony blinked at him, suspicious and worried still, but he grinned anyway. Leered dutifully. "Baby, you know you can ride me ..."

"Don't," Rhodey warned. "Do not go there, Tony. I can't dump you in the ocean right now, but I swear I will give it my best attempt."

Tony laughed, face to face for just a second, light and relieved and stupid, and then the Iron Man mask clanged down. Preparation, Rhodey figured, for some close maneuvering. "Fine, fine. You're no fun, Rhodey, anyone ever tell you that?" He shook his head, the helmet weirdly expressive with Tony behind it. "But we're probably going to have to. Get you up on my back, I'll take the accelerator and the brakes, you take steering in a pinch?"

Rhodey blinked. "Please tell me you did not actually try to steal a car when you were too short to see over the wheel?" 

And he wasn't completely sure, in this time and this place, and considering he'd been heading for a watery grave twenty minutes ago, how the hell that ended up being a question he thought needed asking. Tony Stark. _Seriously_.

Tony snorted faintly, distorted through two sets of mics, and a fair bit of metalic interference as he surrendered Rhodey's weight back to the War Machine's remaining repulsors for long enough to turn and drop altitude. "Nah. That's what the robo-legs were for. Two foot extension of leg length. Add in a plastic crate to sit on, I was good to go. And I only bent the fender a bit. And, okay, part of the garage wall. It was totally fine." 

Rhodey, one part of his mind idly focusing on keeping the War Machine stable in relation to the other armour, another part wondering how much chance there was of that actually being true, took a second to wonder morbidly how the hell they were having this conversation. 

Then he cut power to the hand repulsors as Tony drifted into position, cut off the last things holding him airborne, tilting them at the last fraction to move forward even as he started falling. Even as he started that slow plummet that the back of his mind had been promising ever since that roll of silver-blue. 

Tony caught him. The Iron Man caught him, taking the War Machine's weight from below with a grunt and barely a ripple, snatching him out of the air with casual lack of concern.

The clang as the armours hit was still horrendous, though.

They got it a second later. Rhodey got the armour's legs hooked over the Iron Man's waist, and his hand repulsors out and taking over stabilisation duty before Tony had to unlock one arm to try and do it himself. The Iron Man whined a protest, but Tony dialled up power and pushed them a few feet higher, just because.

And then they hung there, for a second. Two armours locked together mid-air, one perched on the other one's back like two ten year olds piggy-backing around the yard. Tony's arms were locked around his knees with all the power Starktech armour could bring to bear, Tony's repulsors keeping them casually airborne while the War Machine locked itself in place, and it actually hit Rhodey, for the first time in over an hour, that he really, honest-to-god, was not going to die here. In a tin can over the ocean, in the silence. He wasn't going to die like that.

Because Tony Stark didn't know what classified meant, didn't give two shits that tracking active military operations was anywhere from ill-advised to treasonous ... and had apparently been looking out for him probably from the moment Rhodey had borrowed-slash-stolen the War Machine in the first place.

He should worry about that, maybe. Should panic about that, having to explain that, the shitstorm waiting when they got back to civilisation. But here, floating over the endless blue in the almost-fatal silence ... he really, really couldn't be bothered.

"Hey, Tony?" he said, as they started the slow drift back towards home. A wing and a prayer, and the Starktech version of an A-10. Piggy-backing warthogs. Well, shit.

"Hmm?" Tony asked, absently. One arm almost darting out instinctively to stabilise himself, remembering with a grunt of faint annoyance just in time to let Rhodey do the steering for him. Rhodey carefully restrained the urge to comment. No way in hell was he going to be a _literal_ backseat driver, over here. "Yeah, Rhodey?"

"... Thank you," Rhodey said, softly. No joking, not even a touch. Raw and serious and grateful, holding on while Tony carried them home. "Thanks, Tony."

There was silence for a long second, from the other armour. Half-way panicky, Rhodey thought, enough to start smiling, and then: "Someone told me something once about doing things alone," Tony said, quietly. "Thought maybe I'd return the favour, you know?"

... Yeah. Yeah, Rhodey did.

And for some reason, like this, flying like this ... the wide blue silence suddenly wasn't that bad.


End file.
